Julie Larios suspects
her love of writing may be oddly linked with a love of the paraphernalia of
writing.
“I have an
inordinate love of pencils and pencil boxes, post-it-notes, old fountain pens,
vellum, architectural paper, school notebooks, scotch tape, erasers, paper
clips, ink, envelopes,” she says. “Maybe I became a writer because I loved
stationary stores!”
But, in a
more serious vein, she traces her love of writing back to when she was a child
and her mom and dad used to read aloud to her and her sister and brother, and they
gave her and her siblings a children’s poetry collection called The Bumper Book, with pages filled with
poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, A.A. Milne, Edward Lear, Christopher Morley,
and many others.
“I read that
book so many times it literally fell apart in my hands,” Larios says, admitting
that she still has the book stored safely away, although it’s so old and so well-read
that the binding is falling apart.
As a child,
she was a closet worrier, although she prefers to remember herself as a
fearless tomboy willing to do anything. “Cows scared me, believe it or not.
Also, things I couldn’t see under water (like fish and sea grass and kelp)
scared me when I was swimming. Sleeping outside scared me and thrilled me,
both. So my second book, Have you Ever
Done That? begins with the sense that some acts—even small acts like
sleeping underneath the stars on a warm summer night—might require courage.”
She began
writing her own poems in grade school and remembers being inspired by a dreamy
junior high school English teacher, Mr. Ernst, who gave her Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as part of a poetry
prize that she won.
Since then
she’s had many poems published in a variety of national magazines and journals,
including The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The
Georgia Review, and others. Her work is included in The Best American Poetry 2007, edited by Billy Collins, as well as
in the Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXI
and The Best New Poets 2006.
“Poetry is
like any other craft where the object you’re producing takes shape very
slowly,” she says. “That slowness is a joy.”
Most of the
joy, she says, is in the work, and, of course, she takes great joy in the words
themselves.
“I admit to
going through phases of doing absolutely nothing besides dreaming and lolling
about,” said Larios. “My husband and kids have been very patient with me over
the years; they know I go into trances, and I’ve convinced them good poems come
from strange places inside my head.”
Once Larios
finds an idea and chooses a form, she sits down with a piece of paper and writes.
That’s about as much process as she can muster, she explains, other than the
fact that she sits down the next day and revises again and again.
Larios was kind enough to take a break
from revising her poems to share some thoughts on her writing process with
wordswimmer.
Wordswimmer: If writing is like swimming … how do you get into the
water each day?
Larios: Truth be told, I don't! Some days I sit
down at the edge of the water, look at the sky, feel the sun on my face, watch
the clouds, hear birds chirping, think about what a lovely world it is. Those
days I feel just as creative as the days when I'm writing. I don't even think
about writing or about being inspired on those days - I just float in the
world. Other days, and luckily there are not too many of them, I look at
the water and I think "Brrrrrr..." or "Ugh..."and I go
right back inside, in a funk. I wouldn't have produced good work that day, no
matter what, so I'm better off admitting it. When I do decide to swim, I don't
get into the water inch by inch - I go under completely and turn into a fish. I
forget I can speak. I grow gills.
Wordswimmer: What keeps you afloat...for
short work? For longer work?
Larios: Since most of my work is on a single
poem at a time, I find it easy to stay afloat/immersed. I've often told friends
I would love to work on fiction but it is just SO LONG. It would be so easy to
drown in fiction, even with gills! I'm definitely made for poetry, one poem at
a time, and I can stay afloat through the writing of a longer essay—some of my “Undersung”
articles for Numero Cinq, for
example. But even by the end of those I begin to gasp and sputter a
little.
Wordswimmer: How do you keep swimming
through dry spells?
Larios: I read, read, and then read some more. I basically let the water
other writers swam in get me through my own droughts.
Wordswimmer: What's the hardest part of
swimming?
Larios: Aside from being drawn away from the
water by so many other interesting things to do, I think the hardest part is
sustaining the belief that I can swim gracefully and powerfully, and that I
have some talent for it. When an experienced writer begins to believe "I
can't do this," or "I don't do this well," swimming gets
difficult and dangerous. Corny as it sounds, self-doubt is the most
debilitating thing.
Wordswimmer: How do you overcome
obstacles, problems, when swimming alone?
Larios: Well, maybe I'm missing a piece emotionally, because I find it not
too difficult to swim alone. I find it peaceful. I don't turn to friends as
often as I should, possibly—at least, not for help with my writing and not for
any emotional support to get through writer's block. When I approach obstacles
(see "funks" and "dry spells" above) I've been known to
look at them and just say "Hmmm..interesting." I'm curious about the
way we are challenged by the mysteries and detours life presents to us, and I
often write about exactly those things in my poems. I also do a lot of
detouring, just out of curiosity, so maybe obstacle-anxiety is not part of who
I am. I don't mind it when work keeps me up all night. I get into such a trance
when I write; I don't feel challenged as much as I feel kind of exhilarated by
it. Also, as I said above, I don't mind getting out of the water from
time to time—that doesn't worry me. What worries me is not swimming with gusto.
Just putting in the time, that worries me. "Butt in chair" has never
been my favorite approach to writing, which might explain why no one would call
me a prolific writer. But when I do write— I mean, when I swim— I love doing it
so much. There's nothing like it.
Wordswimmer: What's the part of swimming
that you love the most?
Larios: The part of swimming I love most? I
definitely love the feeling that I've gotten it right—I've described an
experience exactly as I meant to, or I've asked precisely (that is, with
precision, like any careful craftsman) the questions that I wanted to ask about
something I find mysterious or puzzling. When I get it right, I can feel it. It
has something to do with finding the right rhythm with words. I think runners
call it "hitting your stride"—maybe swimmers do, too!
For more information
about Julie Larios, visit her website: http://julielarios.blogspot.com/
If you’d like to read
more interviews with Julie, visit:
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1 comment:
So lovely to read about Julie Larios' comfort in being without writing implements for a time, her ease in being, in understanding her process. I think Monet, too, considered sitting in his garden as part of his work.
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